Witness contributing editors Winnie Varghese (left), Samia Khoury (second from right) and Michael Battle (right) flank Sabeel Liberation Theology Center director Naim Ateek at the Sabeel office in East Jerusalem.
by Winnie Varghese
Witness contributing editors Winnie Varghese (left), Samia Khoury (second from right) and Michael Battle (right) flank Sabeel Liberation Theology Center director Naim Ateek at the Sabeel office in East Jerusalem. |
In Israel, the "empty land" was not empty. It is in this century that people have fled, and they are still alive to tell the story. In early February, an interfaith peace-building delegation to the Middle East sat in stunned silence as Palestinian priest Naim Ateek told us of his family’s displacement and his liberation theology. "It is a story of land," he reminded us. It was like our story in the U.S. and like South Africa. Who has a right to work the land? To own it? To travel it safely? Or better yet, who does not? Ateek writes, "The land belongs to God; we must share it."
We met a lot of gracious Israeli Jews, good people, some of whom didn’t know there were still Palestinian refugee camps or displaced peoples. They just wanted to live peacefully. They were themselves Holocaust survivors or descendants of survivors. But the violence of one generation does not excuse the violence of another one, as many Israeli activists we met reminded us.
I believe our discomfort and our quickness to hide behind the fear of being perceived as anti-Jewish is in part our desire to be good. Not good to Jews, but to deny our own privilege in living here, whether we claim a 300-year legacy in this country or a recent immigration story.
The Israeli story is one of fleeing persecution, often at the hands of the church, throughout most of Europe. We know that story. It is the immigrant story around the world. But when it is combined with the reality of peopled lands, and the truth that other people occupy almost all land that is desirable for immigration, we come upon the murky history of colonialism, the missionary movement, imperialism and globalization. Our isolationist nation resists all of those words as too big or complicated – it is the rhetoric of the left. The truth is that these large abstract ideas are foundational to our American Christian identity. They create the story we tell about who we are and how we understand God at work in our lives.
As our nation wages a war with Iraq, remains on the ground in a slightly re-ordered Afghanistan and considers an armed response to North Korea; as we face the overwhelming plight of AIDS in Africa and all the issues facing our own communities; we may not seem to have the time or energy to re-engage Palestine and Israel. After all, being called unpatriotic is bad enough, but being accused of anti-Jewish prejudice is intolerable. (Our church is not free from the legacy of anti-Jewish prejudice, and I write with that caution in mind.)
The Israeli government is building a wall eight meters high and one-to-two meters thick to divide Israel from the occupied territories, which will further prevent the free movement of Palestinians throughout their own lands and into Israel. The effect is like that of ghettoes or reservations. We in the U.S. have just watched a wall come down. No longer is our nation just afraid of a bomb from overhead, but now we are afraid of our neighbors. No wall or piece of duct tape will seal us off from the effects of the violence being done on our behalf.
Our government and U.S.-based charities donate billions of dollars each year toward the Israeli government’s chosen policy of defense. Without the U.S. government’s financial support, Israel could not maintain the occupation. Israel/Palestine is not far away. It is our story, too.
[Ed. note: Winnie Varghese and Michael Battle participated in an interfaith peace-building delegation to the Middle East in Jan./Feb. 2003, co-sponsored by The Witness. An Episcopal statement concerning the delegation’s findings is available at www. thewitness.org.]
by Michael Battle
Michael Battle sits on the edge of a rooftop in downtown Hebron, surveying a silent city suffering its 81st consecutive day under curfew. |
It only takes common sense to realize the truth of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, axiom that an eye for an eye leaves us all blind. When we become present to Palestinians and Israelis alike who advocate a just peace in the Middle East, we participate in the theological notion that we are all God’s children. By understanding the other as a child of God, we no longer understand otherness; rather we are creating relatedness.
The Dalai Lama states, "We have seen many times that today’s enemies are often tomorrow’s allies, a clear indication that things are relative and very interrelated and interdependent. Our survival, our success, our progress, is very much related to others’ well-being. Therefore, we as well as our enemies are still very much interdependent. Whether we regard them as economic, ideological or political enemies makes no difference to this. Their destruction has a destructive effect upon us."
Now, our interrelatedness to Palestinians and Israelis as children of God inspires us to end the main causes of the conflict – the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip by Israel and the tragedy of "suicide bombings" by Palestinians. Israeli control cripples the economy and destroys the social fabric. The desperate attempts of "suicide bombers" only increase a vicious frenzy of military control.
Legitimate questions must be asked at this point. How can I realistically show creative solidarity for a people so far away? Why in the world do you think I am related to "those people" over there?" The short answer is to join a Middle East peace delegation such as those offered by the Fellowship of Reconciliation. By going there you do two things: First, you lessen the spiritual distance; and second, you begin to see persons instead of statistics or TV images. To go there and see for yourself transforms the stranger into a relative, which is the ultimate form of solidarity.
Of course, travel to the Middle East may be unrealistic. So creative forms of solidarity from afar would include supporting Palestinian and Israeli nonviolence initiatives. That support could be financial, or hosting educational events, or doing advocacy with your elected representatives. Another creative form of solidarity would be to pressure corporations that do business in the Middle East to use their financial power to help change the situation.
An interesting example of creative solidarity I would highlight is Ta’ayush (translated from Arabic as "Living Together" or "Life in Common"), an Arab-Jewish Israeli organization. One of our peace delegation members wrote us on March 2: "Ta’ayush led our international group of 17 peace workers to the [villages of Twena and Susiya] in order to determine how we could work together in offering protection to villagers from the increasing frequency and intensity of weekend settler attacks. We decided to develop a rotating schedule of four internationals to sleep and ‘live’ in the village each weekend, hoping to deter or at least document the incidents."
By supporting creative groups like Ta’ayush, we, too, can learn to sleep and live in a village, one inclusive of all persons, regardless of race, religion, nationality, or any other kind of particularity. On that day in which we learn to be such a family, no longer will difference keep us apart; it will instead be our creative source of solidarity as children of God.
by Virginia Ramey Mollenkott
William Blake once remarked, "I was born in 1757 and have died many times since." I too have died many times since my birth into this world: deaths of being abused or abandoned by someone I loved, deaths of bereavement or humiliation, deaths of knowing there were people who believed me worthy of execution. Fortunately for me, as for Blake, each of those deaths brought with it a resurrection into a quality of life that would not have been possible without the extreme experience that accompanied it.
In my work with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, I am often privileged to witness some of those resurrections. On my desk is a recent letter from a lesbian friend who writes, "I am glad to be coming alive, [overcoming] the fragmentation and disconnection that has kept me unalive." She quotes Sam Keen: "The transformation that takes place when numbness is replaced by a capacity to feel ... is momentous. ... The inspirited or resurrected body begins to resemble a tuning fork more than a guarded fortress."
Yes! Coming alive can be difficult, but it is very, very sweet.
How then to understand the willingness, even the eagerness, of many Middle Eastern people literally to fling their lives away on suicide missions designed to take with them people they don’t even know? Clearly they are seeking eternal reward as martyrs for their cause. Pondering those suicide/martyrdom missions, I have often thought about John Milton’s play Samson Agonistes, which raises the issue of whether Samson’s tearing down a huge pillored edifice, killing both his Philistine captors and himself, was martyrdom or suicide. I am not the only one to whom this parallel occurred: Since Sept., 11, 2002, the Times Literary Supplement has been embroiled in a controversy over an Oxford professor’s statement that Samson Agonistes should perhaps be banned because there are so many similarities between Samson’s death and that of the airplane hijackers.
As a Milton specialist, I despair of those who would ban a classic that is so electrically relevant that it raises all the important contemporary concerns for discussion and clarification. (What’s next, banning the Bible?)
To Milton, Samson’s death was not suicide but martyrdom because of its inevitability, a word that appears several times. Blinded and chained, Samson’s only hope is to tear down the roof over his own head in order to destroy the leaders of the government that has occupied his country and enslaved the people. Even then, Milton is careful to say that only the Philistine leaders perished; the ordinary folks (who lacked the status to get seating inside the building) were spared.
On April 28, 2002, the Neopagan priestess Starhawk posted on the Internet her essay entitled "Heresies in Pursuit of Peace." In it she writes, "Full human beings placed in a situation of utter despair may turn to suicide bombs and retribution. Human beings, humiliated beyond bearing, may turn to revenge. But full human beings are not mindless agents of hate. Given hope and dignity and a future to live for, human beings will tend to choose life."
Here then is the agenda for a genuine war against terrorism: to work toward a world in which nobody is so humiliated, deprived and filled with despair that suicide/martyrdom missions appear to be their only and inevitable recourse. Israelis need their own state, but so do Palestinians. Starhawk suggests standing with Israel’s true interests by "demanding an end to the occupation, the dismantling of the settlements, by calling for the intervention of a neutral peacekeeping force and by pressuring the U.S. government to stop covertly supporting and funding Israeli aggression."
So Starhawk suggests, "a flourishing and happy Palestine would be Israel’s best security measure, might even become her closest trading partner." Such a Palestine would certainly offer its youth a more promising future than becoming human bombs. And perhaps Israel and Palestine together could teach other governments how to become sensitive tuning forks rather than fearsome fortresses, how to come alive again after so many seasons of numb and wintry death.
by Robert Hirschfield
The 13-line dispatch from Honduras, appearing in The New York Times (1/30/03), stated that remains found in the jungle near the Nicaraguan border may be those of Father James Carney.
One wonders, 20 years after his death, what the remains will say, whose sleep will be thrown into disarray by the silent chatter of bone fragments, if they are, in fact, Carney’s bones?
In July of 1983, James Guadalupe Carney, 58-year-old Jesuit from St. Louis, peasant organizer from Honduras, martyr-to-be, crossed over into Honduras with approximately 100 guerrillas led by Jose Maria Reyes Mata. Carney was their chaplain.
Honduras, at the time, hosted a force of U.S. military and CIA personnel, there primarily to train and supply the Contras in their war against the Sandinistas. The Reyes Mata didn’t stand a chance. By September, it was wiped out.
Carney was captured in the jungle (his family believes on the third or fourth day of September). The Honduran army claimed it never captured him. It claimed he most likely starved to death in the jungle. John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to Honduras, backed the army’s claim. But in 1987, death squad deserter Florencio Caballero admitted to Eileen Connolly, Carney’s sister, that her brother was brought to the U.S.-run base El Aguacate after his capture and interrogated, then thrown alive from a helicopter. Caballero has since died. Lucas Aguilera, a Honduran Christian Democrat, has since come forward with his own first-hand account. Last year, in a sworn statement to the human rights prosecutor in Tegucigalpa, he testified that he saw Carney at the Nueva Palestina prison, while being held as a subversive. Aguilera, in a conversation with Joe Mulligan, a Nicaraguan based Jesuit and human rights activist in the Carney case, mentioned that the priest looked like he had been tortured.
In his autobiography, To Be a Revolutionary, Carney writes that he lived "in a poor champa (a shack with a dirt floor) in the village of Camalote." Anonymously. Like the peasants he worked with. Many politically active peasants in Honduras ended up as Carney did. So why, of the many, choose to write about one? And why the one who would choose to disappear into the many?
Because he was irresistibly perverse. Maybe that’s why. The recipient of a football scholarship to St. Louis University, educated to be a "Catholic bourgeois gringo," Carney was transformed into a Christian Socialist, into a vision-guided peasant leader who leaped beyond the limitations of his own culture.
In Honduras, he managed to crystallize the limitations of those in power. When the Sisters of Notre Dame wanted to build a swimming pool for the nuns, and not the students, he protested to the sister superior, who said he had no right to stick his nose in her affairs. When his peasant organizing became too much of an irritant, the Honduran government expelled him from the country. When he was captured in the jungle by the army, he was subjected to the reptilian ceremony of interrogation, torture and annihilation.
This human rights case that has not gone away can stand for all the human rights cases that have.
"If he was captured alive," said Mulligan, "he should have been tried. Extrajudicial killings are in violation of international law."
In Michael Ondaatje’s novel, Anil’s Ghost, the skeleton of one of the disappeared of Sri Lanka becomes the obsession of forensic anthropologist Anil Tissera. She calls him Sailor. She goes about trying to turn a statistic back into a life.
A fungus of silence surrounds the remains of the disappeared in Central America. Political killings are turned into private acts witnessed by birds in flight.
Carney’s relatives, along with Mulligan, still demand to know who killed the priest. They want more light shed on the U.S. involvement in the case. Declassified CIA and Pentagon documents have been released, with important information blacked out, buried in the shallow graves of the censors. Twenty years ago is now.
by Rima Vesely
Audre Lorde (1934—1992) has been intrinsically important to the development of second-wave U.S. feminism. She consistently challenged racism, sexism, classism and homophobia, serving as a catalyst for change within and among social movements. Author of 15 books of poetry and prose, she was poet laureate of New York state from 1991—1993.
Warriors battling to claim the authentic fullness of daily life are given an inside view into the person and legacy of Lorde in The Edge of Each Other’s Battles, a recently released documentary produced by Jennifer Abod. The film, which depicts a four-day conference held in 1990, highlights the enduring relevance of Lorde’s work in international, feminist, and lesbian/gay movements. At the center of The Edge of Each Other’s Battles is the complexity of women’s relationships with one another, particularly the personal and political dynamics that race, culture, class and sexuality create amongst all women committed to liberation from a patriarchal status quo.
The 60-minute film is meant as a way to use Lorde’s work in oppressed communities today. In the 10 years since Lorde’s death from cancer, her poetry and prose continue to be a dynamic force in organizing across differences in order to honor the complexity of our individual selves as well as form a united movement in a racist, misogynistic America. The documentary begins by recognizing Lorde’s desire that the conference be intentionally focused on bringing together women who were traditionally separated by race, culture, class, nationality and sexuality, to speak to one another about the truth of their lives.
Interspersed with Lorde’s words, clips from the conference, and poetry by women attending the conference are interviews with conference organizers whose process of organizing the event revealed just how deeply Lorde’s commitment to difference impacted them. White organizers spoke of the need to step back and listen to women of color, and the disappointment they experienced at the failure of various white women to respect the organizers’ commitment to a gathering that was 50 percent women of color and low-income women. The event was, for many, an expression of resistance to the middle-class mainstream women’s movement, as space was intentionally made for women of color rather than white women to be primary speakers, presenters and voices. Several women of color, through poetry, spoke of being attacked through economic policies made by white men, as well as their ability to claim their persons in a violently racist society.
For those of us who listen to Lorde’s challenge as Christians listen to biblical text, the film provided a necessary experience of the intensity of her words. I am now able to read her words and hear her voice, envision her face and body as she was interviewed and speaking on stage. Despite the fact that Lorde’s poetry and essays were not quoted in the documentary, the film gives us, in its entirety, a vision of what the world might be if we were to talk about the truth of our lives and express without fear our commitment to freedom.
[Ed. note: A longer version of this review appears onlineat www.thewitness.org. For more information, see www.jenniferabod.com].
